Of course they were, but broadcasting selective truths and biased commentary is not the same as broadcasting wholly fabricated lies like Breitbart, InfoWars and Trump’s Twitter feed.
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2014 sucked too.
Sorry to nitpick, but you seem to imply that the BBC is run by the state. It is not
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Anyone desiring some broader perspective on this issue, see these links. Keep in mind that despite all of the talk about firewalls, VOA and other USG-funded organizations were ALWAYS federal entities, though RFE/RL, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), were made “grantees” – which does not mean they don’t have to respond to requests or general guidance from the U.S. foreign and national security policy structures in government. And the language in the 2017 defense authorization bill is not new, or directed by Trump himself or advisers, but has been the subject of discussion/debate in DC for some time:
http://bbgwatch.com/bbgwatch/washington-post-enabling-bbg-dysfunction-with-a-dysfunctional-message/
Also:
No-one in Australia listens to this. It’s aimed at our neighbours.
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And radios are still cheaper than internets, or phones.
It wasn’t that long ago that Ethiopia (for example) blocked VoA broadcasts. (Actually it’s happened again.) Leaving VoA’s motivation, quality, etc. aside for the moment, evidently enough people still listen to it that the Ethiopian gov’t thought it important enough to jam the signal.
More recently, they cut off the mobile internet.
Overtime during the Cold War, VOA and the Radio Free networks (not to mention the Armed Forces Network) all played more music. They still had news, cultural programming about the US, but many people tuned in to hear rock and roll. Here is a good book on some of this in Austria in the 1950s:
And the second half of Michael Kramer’s book discusses “hip militarism” and how some young vietnamese became familiar with American pop culture through the Armed Forces Network:
I think that @Abiatha_Swelter is on the mark about how people might turn to other state run radio for alternatives, but I’d also argue that people would tune in DESPITE the propaganda and specifically for the cultural stuff. I think the slow shift to having more popular music on air time indicates that.
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Nothing new there; Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw played a lot of music as well.
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Um. Okay. Sorry.
A good tactic IMO. Cultural exports are one of the main things America has going for it right now. Even in places where most people resent our government it’s easy to find people who love our music, movies and television.
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Umm…adding a bit of historical trivia [1], not intending any criticism.
Sorry if it came across wrong. 
[1] Which I assumed that you were probably already aware of, but I thought that some others might not be.
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About a decade ago I read something by an American visiting Ho Chi Min City. His Vietnamese tour guide pointed out a McDonalds, a KFC, and a Pizza Hut and said “Look! You won!”
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Ah. Yes. I read it as a bit dismissive, so thanks for clarifying what you meant here. Sure enough, VOA was built on the successes (real and perceived) of the use of media propaganda in WW2. Of course the Cold War networks were much better developed and had serious private industry support, too.
And (another neat historical note) those WW2 radio networks also popularized blue grass in Japan (although, there are paintings of the Perry expedition arriving in Japan and US soldiers, in black face, playing banjos!) and now there is a well-developed blue grass scene there, which one of my committee members has been studying these past few years (which is why he’s on my committee, actually).
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wouldn’t blame the rest of the world if they jammed all radio signals and Internet coming out or going into the US for the next four years.
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Oh, like they’re really going to miss the final season of Game of Thrones.
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Possibly the only thing that will save us from a complete media shutdown.
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Surely they won’t be able to shoot down EVERY raven we send out.
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I picked that up from Alberta (during a power outage, so no internet). They were doing a programme on abuse of sheep.
Do many people have shortwave radios anymore? They are hard to find in stores. You can order them from the internet, but if you have the internet would you want shortwave? It’s mostly Jesus stations these days.
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Plenty of people in the US use RT as part of their panel of news sources to counter the relentless propaganda coming from US corporate/state media sources.
So US state propaganda fills in the same purpose abroad. Though obviously they’ll have to work on the entertainment content now that rock’n’roll is dead.
